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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29313534">Deep as Sea</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SalomeSevenVeils/pseuds/SalomeSevenVeils'>SalomeSevenVeils</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Lovecraftian-ish AU Mariners [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Saint Seiya</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Body Horror, Cannibalistic Thoughts, Gen, Kanon doesn't ask for this, Lovecraftian, M/M, Murder, Platonic Cuddling, Poseidon you useless monster fucker, Pre-Slash, being loved by a god is more trouble than it worth, neither do Saga and Aiolos, no beta we die like gold saints</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 09:01:38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,127</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29313534</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SalomeSevenVeils/pseuds/SalomeSevenVeils</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Poseidon doesn't care for humans or land. Why would he let humans fight for him?</p>
<p>(In which the Mariners are more than humans. Things change.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gemini Kanon &amp; Gemini Saga, Gemini Kanon &amp; Gemini Saga &amp; Sagittarius Aiolos, Gemini Kanon &amp; Sagittarius Aiolos</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Lovecraftian-ish AU Mariners [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2153160</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Deep as Sea</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Κητεα, Cetea, Sea-Monster, Children of Ceto. Sea Dragon. Mighty of limb and huge, the wonders of the sea, heavy with invincible strength, a terror for the eyes to behold and ever armed with deadly rage--many of these roam the spacious seas, where are the unmapped prospects of Poseidon, but few of them come night the shore, those only whose weight the beaches can bear and whom the salt water does not fail. They rave for food with unceasing frenzy, being always hungered and never abating the gluttony of their terrible maw : for what food shall be sufficient to fill the void of their belly or enough to satisfy and give a respite to their insatiable jaws?</p>
</blockquote><p>It takes Kanon until he is six years old to witness the sea in its full horrific glory to realize he dreams of it every night. The sea haunts his dreams day after, year after year, from the earliest moment he can remember. He wakes with its songs echoing in his skull, swaying in the corners of his eyes.</p>
<p>The constant dream, however, goes like this.</p>
<p>He is born, not as one but as two, identically red-faced and squalling. Warm light takes him and another from their still mother, wipes birthing fluid from their bodies. There is a quiet sound of a woman praying. It’s a weak sound, choked with approaching death. They are healthy. The woman isn’t. She gives up her life to give them theirs. Waves crash against distant shores.</p>
<p>Be happy, she prays in strained whispers, as if it is taking everything for her to utter the blessing. Love each other. The Goddess loves all.</p>
<p>Then, they are in the air. Storms rage. The ocean is calling him. Beckoning for him to return to them. The light is merciless in its mission. He’s taken away.</p>
<p>Scorching hands pick them up from hard stones. He might have protested, had he not tasted the care radiated from them. He has, so he lays still.</p>
<p>The Star of Misfortune, the aged voice cries.</p>
<p>The hands hold him tight, almost squeezing. I can’t take the life of a baby, the man exclaims. Shock and despair.</p>
<p>He thinks, kill it. Kill it before it sprouts on my corpse.</p>
<p>The man doesn’t. He might hate him for that.</p>
<p>And then suddenly, he is falling. Malice brushes him and is repelled. It invades his shelter instead. It takes roots and grows. The tides cackle. Our chance, our chance, our chance, they croon.</p>
<p>You are mine, mine, mine. My Dragon. They chant, soft, lilting. We love you. </p>
<p>And for that single moment, it is as though the bulk of a whole ocean is forced into him.</p>
<p>It’s crushing, consuming. He is a fish drowning in water.</p>
<p>He wakes up shivering. Salt crusted on his lips.</p>
<p>When a six years old Kanon musters up enough courage to tell the Grandmaster this, waves of rage and suspense push and pull at his sense of self, eternity blotting out everything. They crash over him, and his words are lost to the void.</p>
<p>It would be a long time before he tries again. He never once succeeds.

</p><hr/>
<p>Kanon has a twin brother, Saga. Polite, responsible, perfect Saga.</p>
<p>They are flawless mirror images, dipped in Aegean Sea blue. Their cosmo are bright and powerful. No man can choose who becomes a Gold Saint. Everything depends on the constellations, the Goddess and the universal will to defend. There are certain signs regardless. Sanctuary whispers follow their steps. Saga’s steps.</p>
<p>Kanon is eight, and everyone around him agrees he is strange. Even Saga, but blood and love blurr his judgement. Disagreements only occur when it comes to deciding whether it is a bad kind of strange or a good kind, and to what degree the scale leans.</p>
<p>He is a bright child. Smart, generally well-behaved and standoffish. He follows Saga like a second shadow, soaking up knowledge as sponges with water. He excels in the demanding physical training every Saint hopefuls has to go through. The only difference between him and his brother is that Kanon needs no help in shaking off the hesitation that comes with harming another living being.  A coldly off-putting phantasm to his more amicable twin.</p>
<p>Emotions rarely grace upon his face. When they do, his mind is a pit of snakes. A house of monsters. A feeding frenzy. Fervor pours out of him. From his eyes, from his mouth. He overflows until there is nothing left but a husk. A dried up shell waiting for the next rain.</p>
<p>Trainers don’t like this. However, they appreciate the outbursts, once in a blue moon rare they are. Fighting for Goddess Athena is a tough, onerous honor. You wouldn’t last without resolve and emotions are fuel. He has intense emotions that sweep him up like a riptide, undetectable until one finds themself far offshore and drowns.</p>
<p>Kanon would be a Saint. Both of them would be. So, trainers look the other ways and don’t report his oddity.  Grand Master has many duties to tend to and has recently taken on an babe. Too busy to pay much attention the brothers, who everyone knows, would be the Gemini Saint of this generation.</p>
<p>The other trainees are wary. There is something scary in Kanon’s deep blue eyes. Maybe it is the way he looks through them, like they don’t exist, until they intrude into the bubble of space he reserves only for himself. Then, they have to stare down the sea, calm in its unfathomable depth, hiding monsters that should never exist under the sun.

</p>
<p>He’s a monster in the form of a creepy little boy. A monster always seems to hunger. A monster with no heart.</p>
<p>They don’t see the way he loves Saga. He’s the only one he loves in his life, the only one who don’t recoil from his peculiarity, who in spite of his disquieting gaze and ravenous appetite, still sleeps next to him, still trains with him, still piles food on his plate when he tries to fill the hole inside the lone way he allows himself to. </p>
<p>He even tries his best to shift the less than flattering rumors about Kanon into something more benign, so he won’t be isolated in the only place they can call home.</p>
<p>If that isn’t love, clumsily genuine, he will never know what love is.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~</p>
</div>All Sanctuary knows this: If you can see Saga, Kanon isn’t far away. You just might not be able to see him. If Saga is running amok seeking Kanon, you get out of his way.<p>From the moment he wakes. He can feel it. He can hear them. Aria of briny depth. Sea foam white feelers reach up from the coast.</p>
<p>The first time a storm approached the Sanctuary, they overwhelm him.</p>
<p><em>You never should have been here</em>, they call.</p>
<p><em>You belong to us</em>, they hum.</p>
<p><em>Only we can satisfy you</em>, they tempt.</p>
<p>By the time he notices, he is alone. He is walking on sand barefoot. His feet wouldn’t stop. Led on whims of thousands glowing lures, he follows the call of his blood.</p>
<p>He thinks, he has to return, but as if a bell is ringing out in his head, those reverberating voices bury up his thoughts. He has to return, the more he thinks, the more the voices dig hooks in his flesh.</p>
<p>
  <em>That’s right. Return.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Return to the place you’re supposed to be.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Only then can you be completed.</em>
</p>
<p>Sea sprays lap at his toes. Rains batter his face. His blood is boiling. His breaths escape in white puffs. They shut off the wind. They make the ground below disappear.</p>
<p>He falls. He falls, falls and keeps falling.</p>
<p>“Kanon!”</p>
<p>He stops falling. The voices sink like a thrown rock. Frantic hands haul him back from the brink. Saga’s radiant. He is the lighthouse, the beacon, the rock, his shelter in a world that doesn’t accept him.</p>
<p>“Oh, Saga,” he says, his voice light and detached. “Saga, they were calling for me. I want to go.”</p>
<p>His brother’s fear sinks into his skin, melts into his bones.</p>
<p>“You’re a human. You can’t go with them,” Saga insists. The fingers digging into his shoulders are pale in their bloodlessness. “You belong on land, with me.” Saga commands, the first time since forever.</p>
<p>He yearns, craves, covets. He wants to go. He casts a longing gaze to the end of the horizon. Dark grey swirling clouds, seething tides, screaming gales. He’s freer than he has ever been.</p>
<p>Drenched digits roughly force his chin back to the most important thing in his life. “Promise me you wouldn’t go with them.”</p>
<p>He hesitates. </p>
<p>Elongated white arms hover anxiously around them. One word and they will help even if they have to rip him apart in Saga’s hold. All pieces of him will get to the ocean. He only needs to say one word. One word.</p>
<p>Saga grips his jaw harder. Pained tears prick behind his lids. “Promise me,” he repeats calmly, fear compresses into terror.</p>
<p>What else can he do but agree?</p>
<p>Kanon nods, biting his tongue hard enough to draw blood.</p>
<p>Saga doesn’t relax. “Say it out loud,” blue searches his face for any trace of falsehood.</p>
<p>“I wouldn’t go with them.”</p>
<p>He looks then to the face of his brother, dread and relief slip into his heart in stark contrast. Yet one more thing about him that is unnatural.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~</p>
</div>For a while, their ordinary life goes on. Saga never asks him who or what ‘they’ are. If anyone notices them sharing a bed on nights the currents swell, waves crash and storms bear down on the ancient stones of their home, well, nobody has ever said anything. Their little secret exists out of sight.<p>He still wakes with the beats of lightning flashes. Saga’s arms are branding irons tethering his soul. He clutches the sheet until his fingers go numb, until the air stills, until he can pretend to be human again.</p>
<p>More than once, he catches Saga frowning at the clear blue stretching toward horizon, like he expects to collect bones washing up on the shore one day. Kanon doesn’t have the heart to tell him, they will keep all of me. Not one fragment of me will make it back to you, brother.</p>
<p>Life goes on, until a sun crashes into their life.</p>
<p>They meet Aiolos and the world is never again the same. Kanon remembers that day vividly.</p>
<p>Athens summer is ferocious. The air is scorching, boiling even in the late afternoon. He is sitting in the shade of Colosseum with Saga leaning on him, trying to seek as much relief from the muggy air.</p>
<p>Aiolos comes to them, his face haloed by a descending red sun. Lines of scarlet snake around his hair, his neck, set his hair ablaze, burning the brown away until a crown of light is all that’s left. It, however, pales against the brightness in his eyes.</p>
<p>He comes to them, cosmo argent and asks to be their friend. Not Saga, them. That makes a difference.</p>
<p>Kanon is young, not stupid. He knows many want to be his brother’s friend. They adore him for his kindness, respect him for his strength, idolize him for the potential he’s living up to. Kanon is more often than not a side thought, an unwanted parasite, a mar on brilliance, survives by leeching off love.</p>
<p>Children have better instincts than adults, that is a proven fact. They haven’t been polluted by the slow poison called societal expectations. They haven’t learnt to avert their eyes from unnaturalness.</p>
<p>Cosmo changes the body, yet. Even to the ones taught to harness the power of the inner universe, to accomplish the impossible, they take one look at Kanon and tremble.</p>
<p>In his endless tolerance, Saga understands he can’t make people like Kanon, though he can keep the ones who want to push his brother out at arm length. Beloved by every, no true friend. The whispers might have some truth in it ultimately. Saga waves away his concerns, deceptively light, as if Kanon can’t taste his loneliness every time they touch.</p>
<p>Familiarity doesn’t breed contempt between them. Nonetheless, humans aren’t equipped to handle loneliness. Moreover, Saga is an optimist to his core. </p>
<p>Kanon resigns to his fate, trying and falling.</p>
<p>Until, Aiolos arrives.</p>
<p>Aiolos with his star sweet cosmo, comforting and glittery like spun sugar, with a soft bitter bite of budding solitude. The niggling realization of soon, he will ascend to a higher height, where only a chosen few can ever reach, where his current friends can never enter. </p>
<p>He chooses them to be his companions to the long way ahead. That insight stops Kanon’s protest when their first blistering handshake makes him want to scream. </p>
<p>He runs away later, balling himself up in the coldest shade comes in the wake of the last ray of the sun, his labor breathing loud in the silence. He has never cried before. Never, even with the murmurs when they think his back is turned.</p>
<p>But he feels that perhaps he is on the verge now. </p>
<p>He itches to peel off the handful of skin Aiolos has tainted. His beating heart feels like a hole, dark and abyssal as he traces the blue veins on his wrist. Saga’s touches are grounding. They are the anchor keeping him from floating away, the light he can trust in darkness.</p>
<p>Aiolos’s, Aiolos’s brings him into the air, bringing him to witness the collapsing of a star where a creature of his sort should never be. It will be fine, his touches promise. I won’t let you fall. Nauseating.</p>
<p>He crawls back to their shared room under the hazy light of the wan moon and lets his other half’s presence wrap him up like an old, worn blanket.</p>
<p>Months later, Aiolos never tries to touch him again. He also still wants to be his friend. He isn’t repulsed by his indiscriminate hunger, the way his temperature hovers between the lines of drowned corpses and living beings, the way his eyes go dark to hide the pit of monsters beneath the surface.</p>
<p>He’s the kind of person that makes you want to be the best person you can be. To live up to the expectation (trust) he puts in you. Never judging, never demanding, plain simple trust. It’s the mightiest weapon of them all.</p>
<p>In brown eyes, Kanon is entirely human. He doesn’t know whether he likes or hates it.</p>
<p>Then, Aiolos brings them to visit Aiolia. His darling little brother. The apple of his eyes. His cherished family.</p>
<p>Evidently, somebody needs to sit the archer down and explains to him the unwritten rules. For example, Kanon shouldn’t be trusted with anything precious, anything you want to keep because he might devour them all.</p>
<p>The future Sagittarius Saint misses many criterions.</p>
<p>In a better world, he might be able to bring himself to hold Aiolia, to trust himself not to ruin everything good he touches, to trust his mouth not to salivate. For now, he is content with carding through golden brown hair and tries to think of everything beside how easy soft flesh would part beneath his bite. </p>
<p>He clasps Aiolos on the shoulder later as a wordless gratitude, barely more than a second. The smile he received is blinding.</p>
<p>Down the line, Kanon will think back to that moment, of that smile and wonders if that was what Icarus felt when he was falling to his death.

</p><hr/>
<p>By twelve, they are granted the honor of Gemini Saint and to absolute no surprise, Aiolos, the Sagittarius. Official rank means official missions, means more time away from the Sanctuary.</p>
<p>Kanon is displeased, but since when his opinions matter? Saga takes the increased responsibility gracefully as an angel. Aiolos isn’t happy with the cut in his Aiolia time but takes pride in duty.</p>
<p>This is what it is to be Gemini Kanon: most Sanctuary personnels think him an aberrant. They offer him the due respect of a Gold Saint and not a drop more. A necessary evil, they whisper. He doesn’t care.</p>
<p>This is what it is to be Gemini Kanon. Saga is his asylum. Aiolos makes him feel human. Gemini Cloth swallows the sunken part of him, the rare instances he dons it, locks it tight inside him, behind his ribcage where it throbs like a second heart. Wearing it is an ordeal sometimes. The hunger lashes out at being caged. The invisible feelers are bolder with their attempts to pull him back to the vast emptiness. He shudders at the day he can’t resist the impulse anymore.</p>
<p>All in all, Kanon is a poor Saint of Athena.</p>
<p>He slips into Saga’s bed more often. </p>
<p>On nights the full moon hangs in the sky and the tides surge, he presses his ears to his brother’s chest and counts the steady thumps of his heart. On nights without him, he curls into himself, presses himself flat in a corner without moonlight and waits for the first ray of dawn. During those hazy fevered moments, he has claws, tentacles, fins, exoskeletons. Gills flare for the water that will never come. He is suffocating on land.</p>
<p>In the morning come, the span of skin stretching thin over the knobs of his ribs is smooth and gill-free.</p>
<p>Yet another thing he has to hide from the world. He doesn’t tell Saga. This is the start of a depressing trend of his life.</p>
<p>He is twelve when he becomes one half of the Gemini Saint. He is also twelve when he kills his first man.</p>
<p>A Saint has disappeared without notice with his Cloth while on a mission. After years, the information section finally tracks him down in the mountainous regions of France. Retrieving the Cloth and executing the deserter is his first mission.</p>
<p>He doesn’t know whether everyone goes through missions like this or he is just special.</p>
<p>Hunting down the man is easy. Killing the man is easier. It doesn’t actually take much effort at all. He has been distracted so he’s slow at calling for his Cloth.</p>
<p>It is almost anticlimactic. Muscles and bones crumble. He hears the quiet but distinctive crackling of bones and ruptured vessels. The man chokes, garbled words fall through gritted teeth. The deserter died staring incomprehensibly at his killer.</p>
<p>A better Saint will listen to his justification and will offer him an honor duel. Kanon doesn’t want to know a dead man.</p>
<p>As the man falls onto the ground in a pale, boneless heap, he gazes upon him and then upon a blood-stained hand which has effortlessly taken the beating of his heart from him and thinks. </p>
<p>
  <em>Humans are so fragile.</em>
</p>
<p>His next thought is, nobody is to know how much he wants to lick the red off gold surface.</p>
<p>His next next thought is, he should have listened to the man when red eyes, framed by red hair, gazes up at him, his Gold Cloth and the Box he is holding.</p>
<p>What would Saga do? Or better yet, what would Aiolos do?</p>
<p>The moment he returns with a toddler (Camus. His father, who he has killed, had told the boy to go with the person ‘in pretty gold amour because Daddy has to go far far away. Be brave for me, okay?’), he recalls too late that he shouldn’t have followed what Aiolos would do when a young child is involved.</p>
<p>He leads Camus back to Sanctuary, the place that orders his father’s death, with hands that are warmed by his blood. Little lion would be happy to have another friend, he guesses. </p>
<p>Months later, Saga comes back from a mission with a scrappy silver-haired tail. Aiolos cracks up over the faintly harried air hanging around him.</p>
<p>Aiolos proceeds to bring back a tail too on his next mission. One with black hair that tinted green under the sun and a burgeoning hero worship. Their friend still hasn’t learnt how to deal with that kind of innocent admiration well.</p>
<p>Saga is usually too polite and good-natured for schadenfreude, but he makes an exception this time.</p>
<p>As they grow, relaxed humor seldom comes to his brother. </p>
<p>The corruption has started small, tiny at first. A single seed of evil that grows soft roots into Saga’s heart with every step. It spreads slowly, feebly. Tendrils barely manage to find purchase in the good portion of him but it is tenacious, patiently waiting for the inevitable cracks that form by the result of living.</p>
<p>He thinks, his twin is good and kind. He is also terribly human. The beating thing inside his chest doesn’t only carry blood, emotions too flow through. The seed feeds on morsels of darker emotions to bloom into a wicked blossom that in turn bears a wicked fruit.</p>
<p>The moment the wicked fruit comes into existence, what would happen to his brother?</p>
<p>He imagines in his head, as the flower blooming greedily on his brother’s heart, growing larger and larger by years as he grows darker and darker. He conjures up images of shadows that threaten to engulf Saga’s face and the heartbreaking look on his face.</p>
<p>Kanon believes, if Saga ever wants to rule the world or raze the Sanctuary to the last brick or kill the Goddess they are supposed to protect with their lives by his own volition, he would help without any hesitation. And yet, he also knows that that wouldn’t be his other half at all. His kinder half will tear his heart out on the ashes at the end to atone for the sins the demon inside him commits.</p>
<p>He thinks then, of the void that will follow his death.</p>
<p>Unacceptable. </p>
<p>Hopeless tears boil behind his eyes. Tears he has never managed to shed.</p>
<p>He allows himself to lean on his twin, to bask in the contentment laced under his laughter. He still has time.</p>
<p>Kanon promises, he will die before he lets Saga fall. The promise is tucked away in the place where all precious things should be, between the darkness and the soul.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~</p>
</div>They turn thirteen.<p>Kanon knows he doesn’t play by the rules that ordinary (normal) humans are supposed to. His body refuses to partake in that game called growing up the right way.</p>
<p>Therefore, he doesn’t get dragged in kicking and screaming into puberty. He can’t believe people would actually approach him because Aiolos and Saga are acting uncharacteristic.</p>
<p>(No, Aiolia. I can’t snap my fingers and ‘fix’ your brother...what do you mean he flew into a pillar?) </p>
<p>He doesn’t know how to begin to solve that. The one time he attempted, well, the brave Sagittarius Saint still can’t look straight at him and Saga has pulled him aside to tell him to give the former space and time to ‘cope’.  </p>
<p>At least, the new mixtures of emotions bubble delightfully on his tongue.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~</p>
</div>Fourteen.<p>“Do you like the sea?” Aiolos asks.</p>
<p>They have been watching the sunset on Cape Sounion. Kanon stares at the mesmerizing skyline and disregards his skin trying to tear itself apart for the thing underneath to escape. All is well.</p>
<p>“Why do you think so?” His answer is a question because there is no safe way to answer. They are close enough to brush elbows together but far enough so that every touch will have to be deliberated. Aiolos is increasingly awkward these days. Giving him space and time doesn’t seem to be working.</p>
<p>His twin is on the same boat too. Fortunately, Saga hasn’t stopped him from sliding into his bed yet. For that, he holds his words.</p>
<p>“Sometimes, you look at the sea like you want to give yourself to it,” a calloused hand grasps his elbow. “Don’t,” he requests.</p>
<p>Don’t what? Don’t love it? Don’t give himself to it? Don’t jump?</p>
<p>“You’d have to be clearer.”</p>
<p>“Don’t go anywhere we can’t follow.”</p>
<p>Kanon buries his face into a muscular shoulder and laughs softly. </p>
<p>“We?” He doesn’t promise.</p>
<p>“Saga and I,” ever so patient.</p>
<p>“Only two of you? I’m wounded.”</p>
<p>“You detest crowds. You’d never forgive us if we make a spectacle out of that. Be satisfied with both of us, Kanon.”</p>
<p>His mirth is renewed. He doesn’t answer. The shoulder slumps. He can’t promise. He doesn’t want to lie.</p>
<p>Saga heals the cracks so that the monster can’t escape. Aiolos welds the cracks shut to seal the beast in. Kanon can already tell sooner or later their efforts wouldn’t be enough.

</p>
<p>On the line of broken things and the sea, framed by dying light, he daydreams. Let me eat you, the madness murmurs. I will start from the eyes and leave the heart for last. Your light will kill the monster. I will become human after gnawing your bones clean, it signs in hushed reverence.</p>
<p>Kanon nuzzles Aiolos’ neck and ignores the way his mouth waters.</p>
<p>Saga joins them at the tail end, when the purple has swallowed up bright orange.</p>
<p>He links their fingers together until the moon rises and they have to return.</p>
<p>On the line of broken, not dead things and the yawning sea, Kanon is content because at least for now, there are two people who care enough to keep him from falling.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~</p>
</div>And fifteen.<p>All Gold Cloths have found their Saints.</p>
<p>Camus comes to him occasionally. The boy has finally grasped the truth of that day. Nevertheless, he still drifts close to him, in the training ground, in the library, in dim nooks at moments day meets night, when stars rise.</p>
<p>Is he waiting for an explanation? If so, he would have to wait forever.</p>
<p>Is he lonely? While Camus hasn’t struck off with Aiolos’s baby lion or the sheepling that dodges after Grand Master’s robe, he has seen another boy with hair of purple and a fiery temper.</p>
<p>Is he clinging to similarity? Three years are enough for a sparkling snowflake to transform into a blizzard. Aquarius Saint is a chilling mass of cosmo. From outside, they must have been similar. </p>
<p>Outsiders are blind. Camus’ ice shell hides a red-hot core. Nothing like his barely pumping rock.</p>
<p>They never talk about anything important. They train together occasionally. Most of the time, only comfortable silence stretches between them. He always ruffles red hair at the end of their meetings to savour tiny starbursts of happiness.</p>
<p>He marks this down as a win, socially.</p>
<p>One problem averts, he still has ninety-nine little problems left.</p>
<p>The seed of evil is a Damocles sword hanging on Saga’s neck. It’s still a bud right now. He doesn’t know how long that will last.</p>
<p>Every day, without fail, there is the hymn of the waves. It is subtle but unmistakable. A desire to cast himself into the void, to allow him to be pulled along by its power, to surrender his being however briefly, to satiate its ravenous appetite. If his mind wanders, he invariably finds him being carried away to Cape Sounion steep drop.

</p>
<p>They don’t tell each other. Secrets are a curtain separating them. Disappointments clog his throat. Bitter.</p>
<p>He thinks about asking the Grand Master for help, telling him everything. Grand Master is wise, he would know how to help Saga. He is the best candidate after Goddess Athena herself. The Goddess will be born soon, how long can his brother hold on?</p>
<p>His instinct screams, they don’t have years to wait. Tell him, it insists. His instinct sounds like two people he trusts the most.</p>
<p>The faded terror comes back as an unwanted guest. It winds around his throat, glossamer and ephemeral, of transparent spider-thread filaments and patchwork and lace. He is surprised that they haven’t cut into his neck and drawn blood. Or better yet, snap his neck. He wouldn’t have to worry about anything then.

</p><hr/>
<p>“Can you sleep with Kanon tomorrow night?” Saga says while he is browsing through the shelves, out of the blue.</p>
<p>He reaches out to catch the book slipping out Aiolos’ shock-slacked fingers. They are at their table in the library. They don’t actually own the wooden furniture but it has become theirs after years of regular usage. The library goers know to avoid their territory unless completely necessary.</p>
<p>Kanon tears his eyes from the fascinating passage to give Saga a look. The brown-haired Saint next to him seems to have stopped breathing. The other half of Gemini manages to kill a Gold Saint with only a question. Impressive, his mind supplies.</p>
<p>His twin turns from the tomes with a puzzled frown when answer doesn’t come. What greets him is a blush that might even be visible from space. He blinks.</p>
<p>Saga really doesn’t know how that question sounds like, he decides. Taking mercy on both of them, Kanon rams his knuckles into the frozen statue’s ribs. Air escapes in a wheeze and the statue turns back into a living being.</p>
<p>“Wha-“ Aiolos sputters.</p>
<p>“He doesn’t mean it in the sexual way,” Kanon cuts him off. And there’s the flush of understanding. The red on his cheek makes Saga look livelier, with the light streaming through the windows lifting his visage. The cast of his face stops being so grave, the set of his shoulder not as tense.</p>
<p>He can’t resist adding, “Unless he does mean it in a sexual way. I can ask myself if I want to, Saga.”</p>
<p>The blush spreads south.</p>
<p>“No, I… not that way,” seeing the other so flustered is a rare occurrence. “A storm is coming.”</p>
<p>He goes rigid.</p>
<p>Saga continues in a rush. “I have to leave for China tonight. Storms are hard on you.  I don’t want,” he falters. “Having somebody with you lets me worry less.”</p>
<p>Kanon ducks his head. He notices. He notices. He has thought he hid the growing effect well. His thought stills. He is calm.</p>
<p>“Wait, what is this about storms?” Another voice joins in, worry barely hidden.</p>
<p>He lies through his teeth. “I can’t sleep when it’s raining,” lips curve up to pacify concerned brown eyes. “Saga is just overprotective.”</p>
<p>“I’m not,” the overprotective brother refutes. “You would stay awake for days,” he sells his own blood out. The concern comes back stronger.</p>
<p>“Why haven’t you told me this before?” Aiolos cants his face closer. He doesn’t lean away. Voice laced with hurt, he asks. “We are friends, aren’t we?” </p>
<p>Pulling that card is cheating.</p>
<p>Kanon doesn’t look away. Blue meets brown. Looking away means admitting weakness. For all his virtue, Aiolos would capsize on a weakness if he feels necessary. </p>
<p>“Why would I tell anybody a problem they can’t fix?” The corners of his lips tug upward. Slowly, he brushes a thumb almost gently across the other’s jaw. “Saga doesn’t count since he can’t not know. You shouldn’t need to worry.”</p>
<p>He should feel bad. His touches clearly mean something to Aiolos. Regardless, he doesn’t want or even capable of explaining himself, his differences.</p>
<p>Pulse jumps beneath tanned skin. “I want to. You’re my-” Embarrassment seeps in the tips of his digits and something else unique to Aiolos.</p>
<p>“Your friend? A fellow Saint?” Fingers slip into short hair. He grips a handful, nails scratch along the scalp. “Having a warm body next to me helps. However, I’m incapable of keeping my hands to myself. I would want to crawl underneath your skin, to get myself as close as possible,” his voice pitches lower. Their faces are barely a handspan apart, close enough to touch lips and exchange breaths. “Do you think I haven’t noticed-”</p>
<p>A hide-bound volume falls between them. Kanon wrenches his hand back. The thick edge bounces against the wood with a resounding crack.</p>
<p>Saga looks as surprised as he is. His face quickly morphs into ire. </p>
<p>“Don’t put words into his mouth. If you don’t want to, just say it,” his twin admonishes.</p>
<p>“Ignore him. I’m sorry you have to hear that,” he apologizes to Aioros who is still staring at Kanon like this is the first time he has truly seen him. “Please forget my request,” he spins around abruptly and strides to the door.</p>
<p>Chair scrapes on the stone floor as Kanon scrambles to follow. Warm palm circles his bicep. “I would do it because it’s you. You are important, Kanon.”</p>
<p>His smile softens into something more genuine under earnest gaze. “You’re a good friend,” he pats the back of his hand once before tugging his arm out. </p>
<p>He chases after Saga without a glance back.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~</p>
</div>Kanon catches up halfway on the stairs to the House of Gemini. It has reached the point where afternoon teeters to the side of evening. Light has gone feeble behind the sheen of cloud.<p>“Why did you do that?” He asks, without context, through Saga would understand.</p>
<p>“I meant what I said.”</p>
<p>All expression drains from his face, shutters up like a blind.</p>
<p>“You have never tried to decide anything related to me by yourself before. Have you decided that it’s easier this way after fifteen years?”  </p>
<p>“You would have never agreed.”</p>
<p>He doesn’t smile. His mouth is tight at the corner. He rears up like a threatened snake, but his bite is made with milk-fangs. “Have the decency to look at me when you lie to my face,” fingers lunge to seize.</p>
<p>Saga snatches his wrist back before he catches more than soul-deep regret.</p>
<p>“I don’t want to come back one day and be told about your disappearance!” </p>
<p>Kanon flinches.</p>
<p>His brother makes a noise that sounds entirely too much like the whispers. It stings.</p>
<p>“You always look like you have a foot out of the door, ready to leave at any moment. Like you want nothing more than running to the shore and let them take you,” the words come out in a growl. “I want my brother to stay. It is too much to ask?” He adds, softer.</p>
<p>Kanon’s heart is throbbing. The sunlight streaming down on them is a sudden, impossible weight on his shoulder. He is tired. Others whisper about his heartlessness, about how he doesn’t deserve anything, but he is so far beyond mere fatigue. It cannot possibly be just fatigue--this heavy, lightless, all-encompassing feeling--which has shattered every piece of him that had ever been worth a damn.</p>
<p>Saga talks as if he wants to be a patchwork doll. A twisted amalgam of human flesh and something that doesn’t show up under a microscope, but exists. A freak of nature.</p>
<p>His eyes open wide, daring Saga to look away. His blood is boiling. He bites down on his tongue. Sharp tang of iron fills his mouth. The pain clears his mind.</p>
<p>He washes the sticky and vicious emotions, ones leaving bubbling gashes, bringing him ruin from the inside down with blood.</p>
<p>“Try again. You didn’t answer my question,” he says, and it’s neither sharp nor venomous. “Why did you tell him without discussing with me first?”</p>
<p>He continues when silence reigns. “You like Aiolos. I like Aiolos. You know he’s the only beside you that I fully trust. I don’t mind telling him. He wouldn’t judge or tell others without permission. You know this.”</p>
<p>So, “What are you afraid of?”</p>
<p>Saga’s jaws clench. For a second, he sees red veins pulsate in the white of his eyes. “I’ve said my reasons. Believe it or don’t,” he grits out.</p>
<p>His throat hurts. There is a sharp, hot thing stuck in his guts. Dread, he figures.</p>
<p>Kanon carefully mulls over the words in his head. A suspicion has been growing in his thought, lurking around the edge until he decides to give its voice. “Is this about the evil inside you?” He whispers.</p>
<p>Saga jolts. The annoyance slides off like a mask, leaves pure, unadulterated panic behind. For several beats, they merely stare at each other, scorching holes with their eyes, before Saga smiles. Jagged and bright as a shard.</p>
<p>He steps closer. “What are you talking about?” He snakes around Kanon’s waist, pulling him close. “What evil?”</p>
<p>Peering at the brightness in suddenly unfamiliar eyes, heels grind down to flatten the urge to take the offending appendage off. </p>
<p>“Who are you?”</p>
<p>Nails rake into Kanon’s side. “What are you talking about?” Not-Saga laughs. “I’m Saga.”</p>
<p>“You are not,” he denies.</p>
<p>The calm hand buried in his side moves to the small of his back to press him into a hug. “I’m sorry,” a chin rests on his shoulder. “Don’t be angry. I was afraid that you would refuse and make me promise not to tell him,” Saga mumbles into his ear.</p>
<p>The other hand wanders up his back, digs into his spine to seal the gap between their bodies. “I thought it was better to beg for forgiveness then to ask for permission. I don’t think I’m wrong but I’m sorry for betraying your trust, Kanon.”</p>
<p>“No,” he shoves his way out of the cage of arms. ”Don’t you dare pretend to be him, parasite.”</p>
<p>For a second, the thing looks utterly baffled. Through it is only a moment then it bleeds out, leaving displeasure behind.</p>
<p>“You pick the worst time to speak up, huh, brother?” The hand springs out again, snatching Kanon’s forearm. It’s crushingly tight. He’ll end up with bruises today. He forces calm into his voice, layers it over the dark pit in his soul.</p>
<p>“Let go.”</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, the wicked flower doesn’t. He draws him back over, cradling his cheek.</p>
<p>“The sky belongs to Zeus, the ocean is under Poseidon and Hades rules the underworld. Goddess Athena has kept the stalemate on Earth going for thousands of years. For that, I respect her. However,” a palm creeps over to his nape. “They only need to win once, Kanon.” </p>
<p>Moist breath ghosts over his lobe. “I can do better. I can make Earth strong. Strong enough so that no god can ever toy with mortal lives ever again,” lips press into his neck as if to etch a script onto his bones. “We’re invincible together. Stay by my side. Help me.”</p>
<p>“Why should I?” His breath comes in thin, intermittent huffs.</p>
<p>“Think about it. We can rule the world. You could have anything you desired. There's no one that could touch us. Nothing would be out of your grasp. You will be adored for being yourself. No more pretense.”</p>
<p>Kanon gazes at the thing in Saga’s skin with the glossiest blue, lights bouncing and reflecting off of his pupils, considering. “Is that so?” Triumph blooms then he kills it with two hands around a thoat, thumbs resting deceptively light on Adam's apple. </p>
<p>“I’m insulted that you thought I couldn’t feel your cosmo moving,” he hisses. “Being an attack dog isn’t bad, if that was what Saga wanted. He would never even need to take control of me, he just needs to <strong>ask</strong>,” jamming his fingers on the bobbing lump when the evil tries to open its mouth, Kanon admits. “I love him more than anything in existence. I can die and live for him. You are not him.”</p>
<p>Rage sears. “You think he loves you?!” The thing snarls suddenly, a piercing sound, raw enough to flay his flesh from bones. “You called me a parasite. How about looking at yourself?”</p>
<p>“Have you ever made a decision on your own? Ever? You only act in line with what you know that’s proper. Anything you get from him comes with strings attached. Be good, be proper, be what a Saint of Athena should be. Don’t you get it? He will cast you away the moment you can’t fit in anymore,” poisonous words slip out, so soft over the sting.</p>
<p>“You think your precious Aiolos will still look at you the same if he knows about the rot under your skin? You’re pathetic. Nobody loved you. Nobody has ever loved you.”

</p>
<p>It doesn’t hurt.</p>
<p>“Come with me. I will give you the chance to be yourself,” temptation rasps over the blockage on the windpipe.</p>
<p>His fists tighten to choke. “Aren’t you doing the same, right now?” Kanon smiles sweetly. “Promises and conditions. Halt the Demon First. You can’t put me under before I kill you. Outside of Cloth, we’re equal.”</p>
<p>“Are you going to stay there and let this thing run your mouth, Saga?” He continues his stranglehold when the thing tries to speak again. Sharp nails dig into his nape, blood drips. Bony digits trail bruises on the fragile skin of his neck.</p>
<p>Wrath tingles down his arms. Then it is swept away by regret and horror. He relaxes.</p>
<p>Pinpricks of pain announce themselves when digits gently draw out from under his skin. He doesn’t wince.</p>
<p>Saga attempts to speak, features complicated. What ultimately escapes is a hoarse “I need to go.” Kanon can’t say he hasn’t seen that coming. </p>
<p>They sorely need a talk. </p>
<p>He is tired. </p>
<p>He doesn’t say anything as Saga turns away.</p>
<p>It doesn’t hurt.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~</p>
</div>The next night, Aiolos comes to his room while water is pouring from the sky in thick, icy sheets. Lightning flashes are drums of war heralding the incoming storm.<p>From his eyes, he can see nothing but white sea foam. From his ears, he can hear nothing but the madness of deep silence. Only cosmo warns him of the welcomed intruder.</p>
<p>Aiolos can’t silence the world like Saga could, but he helps by making it certain one can’t see anything else but him. The anxious cloud hangs on him like a cloak evaporates the moment he sees Kanon.</p>
<p>Blanket a puddle around his waist and bandage a garrote around his neck, Kanon spreads his arms wide in a wordless request from the cold comfort of his bed. Aiolos must have seen something because Kanon is swept into a full body hug. Over the years, his touches have never stopped searing yet they are comforting all the same.</p>
<p>Comfort is wasted on him but the distraction is appreciated.</p>
<p>They lay together that night. Legs tangle, his fingertips ghost along Aiolos’ chest. They drag over the same spot of his heart again and again. The hand shakes. </p>
<p>Aiolos slots their hands together and holds them to his heart, tremors rake even in his grip. Memories of a heart stilling forever in his hand surface. This close, he just needs to push a little then he can feast. Blood will dye him in its color. Blood will set him free.</p>
<p>“How can you help somebody who doesn’t want help?” He doesn’t sound like himself. Soft, cold and a little blurred, like unhemmed edges of fine cloth.</p>
<p>“You can’t. You can try to get through to them, you can let them know you care and you’re there when they’re ready,” only the lack of judgment stops Kanon from kicking Aiolos out of the bed. “But they have to come to the conclusion that they need help on their own.”</p>
<p>He’s a hypocrite. “He doesn’t want my help,” he doesn’t even have to specify who ‘he’ is. There is only one person in the whole world that can make him shake. It might have already been two, he thinks despairingly. He doesn’t want to think about it.</p>
<p>“Can you tell me?” Aiolos asks, still pressing a cold hand onto the bare skin of his sternum.</p>
<p>“No,” he cannot think properly. There is a fierce, consuming ache that is threatening his very consciousness— he feels faint. Yet, there is one thought that prevails above all others. It is a very childish voice, and it says very childish things.</p>
<p>
  <em>It’s our secret. I don’t need you. I can help him myself if only he lets me. If only.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>If only.</em>
</p>
<p><em>Will you help him in my stead?</em> He hesitates, and he doesn’t know how to say it. Aiolos will do it because he’s that kind of person. He wants to hear the confirmation.</p>
<p>He can’t do that to Aiolos. If he asks, Aiolos will agree. He can’t do that. He can’t let him promise something he doesn’t have all the pieces for the full picture. Doesn’t that make Aiolos only a means to an end?</p>
<p>Isn’t he just a means to an end?</p>
<p>Kanon hopes not.</p>
<p>“I’ll do my best,” the archer proves he knows Kanon better than most people would ever manage. “Promise me you would seek help when you’re ready too.”</p>
<p>I will never be, he knows this as well as the back of his hands. “Yes,” and he lies.</p>
<p>Between the fingers of his free hand, transparent webbings reflect dying light.</p>
<p>Aiolos doesn’t talk again for the rest of the night. Kanon wants if only for a moment, Aiolos would roll him over and <em>make</em> him speak. To be the type of person who would demand an answer to the strangeness, the landmines that he and Saga circle and never speak off. He doesn’t.</p>
<p>Kanon can’t make him be another kind of person. He isn’t allowed to want him to be the person he wants. Aiolos deserves better.</p>
<p>Kanon curls closer.

</p><hr/>
<p>Athena is born with the dawn.</p>
<p>Sanctuary celebrates.</p>
<p>The Grand Master calls for a meeting to choose the successor.</p>
<p>He is running out of time.

</p><hr/>
<p>He should have come to Grand Master before, fears be damned.</p>
<p>“‘Outside of Cloth, we’re equal’,” black hair, red-veined eyes and a malice Saga would never have allowed. “Thank you for reminding me,” the wicked creature mocks.</p>
<p>His heart drops. “You haven’t won yet,” he is calm.</p>
<p>“You’re behind bars. This body is mine now. I’m free to take what belongs to me.”</p>
<p>“I’m still alive,” he retorts. “I hurt your pride. I’m the foremost obstacle to your plan because I know about you. If I was you, I would have killed me the first chance I got. Saga is still in there, isn’t he? He’s still fighting. You can’t kill me.”</p>
<p>Armored fists tremble slightly in fury. Kanon knows he is right.</p>
<p>“Isn’t this place perfect for you? A watery prison overlooking the sea you love so much,” he ignores the acerbic taunt. “I will kill you last, when the world is finally under my dominion. You, I will keep until you regret not accepting my generosity. See you later, Kanon.”</p>
<p>Flattening his hands on the bars, Kanon lets the winds carry his answer. “I will kill you,” it’s neither a threat nor a promise. It’s a statement.</p>
<p>“Come. If you can bear killing the brother you love so much.”</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~</p>
</div>The bars of Cape Sounion Prison are too sturdy for him to break. That thing counts on it, counts on this wave-cut notch to keep him contained while it steals away things that have never belonged to it.<p>It knows what Saga knows. It knows about the way the ocean calls for him. It knows about the fits, the twitches, his habit of hiding himself under a blanket of void, smothering his true nature.</p>
<p>However, not even Saga knows he has never been alone even on land. </p>
<p>He can hear rustle of wind moving, a thousand hoarse voices.</p>
<p>The tide is low, almost hesitant to touch him. The sun is high on the blue sky. This is the closest he has gotten to the sea alone for years.</p>
<p>Glassy tendrils emerge. A sound like fabric trailing over sand, like a thousand serpents all slithering over each other at once. They wind around his toes, climb up his calves. He lets them. </p>
<p>The song of the ocean is louder. There is a rhythm to it, like breathing, he synchs his own breaths to it.</p>
<p><em>Come</em>, he commands.</p>
<p>They obey. There are so many. There is a voice in his ears. Hooks tear at his clothes. Furtive hands on him, pulling and pushing and moving. Lips - cold, bitten, torn, wet - nuzzling at his spine. Pressing against his form. Murmuring. Praise and worship. Plea and prayer. All of them want one thing, Kanon himself.</p>
<p><em>Help me</em>, he requests. Help me save him.</p>
<p>They wilt, lifeless. They don’t like Saga, they hate him, they despise him. The hatred is thick as congealed blood.  </p>
<p><em>I will return</em>, he bargains. <em>Please</em>, he begs.</p>
<p>Then, an ageless voice says, very quietly. <em>Behind.</em></p>
<p>He tears into the cliff wall. Millenia-old rocks crumble, part mud-like underneath his fingers. Salt-soaked fragments are drawn away by them, eager to please.</p>
<p>He digs. He digs. He digs. He leaves the light and descends into darkness. Tides surge.</p>
<p>To his eyes, there is nothing but endless dark. And yet he can see, there, in the distance—a different gradient of shadow that rears like a tsunami, an edge of the horizon ready to fold over and crush him, to fold him into that nothingness until he is a part of it.</p>
<p>A fog settles in his brain the deeper he goes. He isn’t tearing through solid rock anymore. The singing a constant, urgent hiss. He knows the exact moment he breaks through.</p>
<p>The Trident. Poseidon, the ageless voice whispers. <em>Our Lord.</em></p>
<p>Divine metal, polished to perfection, shimmers in no light. </p>
<p>Kanon reaches out.</p>
<p>It builds like a pressure in his hand, as if the blood has stopped flowing—it spreads up his arm, up his shoulder, his neck. It settles thickly behind his eyes, on the back of his tongue, in his lungs. He is heavy, and feverish, weighted down by darkness. He feels the surf pounding with every beat of his heart, growing slower, deeper, until it pounds through every part of his body.</p>
<p>A voice comes. It is not the same he heard before, a hiss that rose over the screams of the dying and the clash of metal. In it is a different kind of cruelty, a different kind of cold. Kanon sees a flash of hair, floating like seaweed, eyes of starless night, of ocean-bottoms. The universe smiles, and reaches out.</p>
<p>He is—</p>
<p>—parting the waves across the ocean that stretches out to forever. Nereides holding their skirts up over their white knees, run along on top of the reefs and break waves. The nymphs passing a ship from hand to hand and side to side, keeping it scudding through the air on top of the waves. Their wild laughs tear the morning air.</p>
<p>—A bedchamber, a sense of home, crystal clear water pressing in—a face laughing, dangerous like a submarine volcano about to blow. The weight of divinity on his body, the slide of lips down his throat, the sense of being worked apart like a tangle, pearl hue fingers denting his scales. For the sea loves, but it has no sympathy, no capacity for such small things as forgiveness or mercy.</p>
<p>—The graveyard of his home, the empty shell of his kins, Athena’s Saints. Cosmo burns. He loses his grips on his body. A fissure opens up in the sky. Black blood speckled with stars spills out of his mouth. A golden arrow shines through the swirling tornado like the sun peaking through storm clouds. He has to stop it. He has to.</p>
<p>—Poseidon rages. It’s horrible. It’s sad. Deep current cosmo slips through his control, lashing out in grief, the cataclysm of a supernova. He is coming apart on the zenith of his destroyed kingdom. Athena wins. He keeps what belongs to him. Atlantis sinks in pieces.</p>
<p>Kanon shrieks with laughter, throwing his head back, unhinging his jaw and feeling the tremors coming deep from his belly spreading to his arms.</p>
<p>He laughs and laughs in the silence that hushed through the prison, all activities still and stands frozen. He laughs and laughs until his airy laughs turn dry with his raw throat.

</p>
<p>What a comedy his life is.</p>
<p>The world spins. Colors washing away, blurring everything together into nothing. It is suffocating, yet he could not remember the last time he is this alive.</p>
<p>Guilt, relief, horror, elation, exhaustion, eagerness, stupor – they all war, mixing and swirling together in a volatile combination that sends his stomach rolling, his head spinning, and heart thudding painfully beneath his rib cages. Through it all, the visions wouldn't cease, surfacing long enough to steal his breath before disappearing back into the rolling abyss.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~</p>
</div>The next hours, days, months, years, centuries are hard to explain. He doesn’t know or care even when he should. He should be afraid but he doesn’t. What does he need to be afraid of?<p>It’s like having a scab, except the scab is his skin—he is just scar tissue holding his form over. Tearing open that scab and slipping out isn’t painful, shedding skin a few layers too deep feels right. Human-made clothes stand no chance.</p>
<p>Dark tendrils move under his skin like the sunlight dappling through water. No, not under his skin. He is a chrysalid cracking. Blood beads up in their wakes. There is so much blood, flowing freely from the fractures.</p>
<p>There are other things too. Blue and gleaming, curling around the columns of his legs. More emerge from inside, from his hips, his backs. Squirming things, fleshy and bony, scaly and slimy. He sees a trill of delicate pale fins peak out then retreat. Spikes and thorns protrude. Translucent scales half-way being dyed red. Feathers that form stunted, misshapen wings, and eyes that open upon them to look back at him. </p>
<p>He lets go of the Trident, slides down until the water goes above his head and breathes. Gills start to flutter like rows of thin mouths opening thirstily at the first touch of water. He watches as these things come crawling out. It doesn’t hurt.</p>
<p>His legs are the first to go. A curtain of slipping appendage, glowing a soft blue-green. Skeletal wings, unfit for flight, drape over his shoulders and hips. Pupil-less eyes blinking in the darkness. He also has grown more mouths, they quiver in tandem with the slits of his gills.</p>
<p>He cards a hand through floating hair. A clump of blue strands catch on his fingers and falls off, taking nails along. He is growing claws.</p>
<p>He stays like this for an eternity, silent and contemplating as his body grows and twists in increasingly bizarre shapes. Waterline goes up and down.</p>
<p>How would he explain this to Saga?</p>
<p>Saga.</p>
<p>He startles.</p>
<p>Kanon yanks himself out of the dream-like state. </p>
<p>He knows what he should do now.</p>
<p>The sea laughs. It has won.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~</p>
</div>The bars snap like a handful of brittle bones. How long has he been here? The moon is high tonight, casting the world in shades of pearl and dark ocean water.<p>Out of salt water, red once again flows. Feathers sprouting eyes and teeth and weeping blood. He's shaking, anemones blooming and withering up and down his spine, star dust misting his breath, his chest filling with storm clouds, too many teeth.</p>
<p>Everything hurts. Athena’s divine cosmo boiling hot as it rolls over his skin, making it dry and raw. He is pathetically grateful as it holds the pieces of his tattered humanity together even from out here. Blood erodes on the ground beneath him and lets salt bubble up.</p>
<p>First steps are painful. Like the little mermaid, his brain points out. And that nearly sends him into hysterical laughter again. A creature of the deep exchanges her life for a chance of love on land and fails. He could see the parallel lines.</p>
<p>His legs stumble their ways forward, propped up by new appendages. Awkwardly and slowly, even air as glass-shards on his skin, he persists. Saga’s cosmo is the Ariadne’s thread leading him, not to the entrance of the labyrinth but to the Minotaur so he can slay it. </p>
<p>Kanon drifts through the roads of Sanctuary like smoke from an extinguished torch, following his feet until they lead him where he knows he needs to be— the Star Hill, the place closest to Heaven, where the Grand Master reads the movement of the stars, isolated and forbidden, perfect for murder.</p>
<p>Years of cosmo manipulation slip through his palms like oil. He can’t weave intricate illusions to hide himself anymore. His cosmo is different. His body is different. He is different. He doesn’t want anybody to see him like this. </p>
<p>As usual, his want doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>His stomach clenches. A fire burning, tearing and clawing. He tentatively labels it as hunger. It doesn’t feel like the usual yearning that makes him down enough food for a dozen. His tongue burns in his mouth as if blistered. He swallows and his throat clicks, suddenly and horribly parched.</p>
<p>He licks his lips. Blood on his tongue stains them red.</p>
<p>A gasp of surprise and his new limbs react. Only at the last moment he remembers to be gentle. Well, gentler. The footsoldier collapses with a thud and not with a missing head. The soldier has seen him. He will live. He marks his track with unconscious bodies and his own blood instead of cadavers, a macabre version of breadcrumb trail because apparently he’s on a fairy tales kick tonight.</p>
<p>The guards are a joke. The traps are harder but manageable. He doesn’t tire, doesn’t hurt from the nicks and scratches. </p>
<p>He, however, is late.</p>
<p>He arrives at the top the moment Grand Master falls to the ancient altar with not-Saga ranting above him triumphantly.</p>
<p>What all the training has never managed to instill in Kanon is a sense of pride and fairness in battle. He has a clear shot at the thing’s back, he clutches at the chance with the desperation of a drowning man.</p>
<p>He clocks it over the head with the Trident as hard as he could. It jerks backward. Sharp barbs from his new limbs puncture the part not covered by the Cloth. Oh, he has venom now.</p>
<p>He shifts into a more comfortable position and whacks three more times for good measure.</p>
<p>In hindsight, he probably has gone to some excess. A minor detail though. What matters is that it works. </p>
<p>He expects resistance when he tries to take off the Cloth. All Cloth has some measure of consciousness, even more so with Gold Cloths. A Cloth wouldn’t take lightly to an attempt to remove it from its chosen wearer and yet, the moment his blood drops on metal, the seams loosen.</p>
<p>Do you hate this as much as me? He wants to ask the Gemini Cloth. Thank you. He pries off the breast plate and sets it aside. Laying his hand on Saga’s sternum, under the palpitation of a strong, healthy heart, there is another set of vibration, slower but just as strong. He knows that is his target.</p>
<p>He ignores the outrage spiraling in a chemically-induced loop and gets to work. Mortal flesh is nothing before his claws. Kanon carefully pulls aside the soft tissue. Blood loss would be an issue if this isn’t the body of a Saint. Saints excel at surviving.</p>
<p>Under the pale moonlight, Saga’s heart beats in the cage of white ribs.</p>
<p>It’s beautiful, he muses. This is the first time he sees a living whole heart. It’s appropriate that it’s the closest he can get to his own.</p>
<p>Does he even have a heart anymore?</p>
<p>He doesn’t want to think about it.</p>
<p>Painstakingly, he breaks the ribs. Gaining unrestricted access to the heart is the first easy step. The next part is harder. Between one stuttering heartbeat and the next, Kanon seals his mouth over the ugly parasite latching on the center of the organ. Cosmo explosion lights up the dark hilltop.</p>
<p>
  <em>He is the Sea Dragon. He is the Devourer. A lowly pest is nothing. How dare it pollute what is <strong>his</strong>?</em>
</p>
<p>He promised, in the voice of a human, no divine blood in his veins and no soul to his heart, that he would kill this thing. Making it his first meal as a not-human is only proper.</p>
<p>Fire blazes through him, sending red-hot blasts into the back of his maws and down his spine. His throat collapsing into itself as his head burns with a sort of relentless, all-encompassing fire he'd not known before this very moment. (He is a dead man, a god, an object, a human, a brother, he doesn’t have enough power to do this, he has all the power he would ever need—)</p>
<p>Saga spasms. He pins him to the ground in a mess of flexing limbs. The metal is so hot it burns cold. The parasite fights him all the way down to his guts. Its roots drill into his throat to try to find purchase. Resistance is futile, can’t it see?</p>
<p>Underworld creatures leave a distinctive aftertaste. Earthy, warm like a river of fire and cold like gemstones with the mustiness of stale air. This thing doesn’t taste like death so Thanatos is out. He doesn’t think Thanatos has the patience for this kind of roundabout scheme. Hypnos might, but it doesn’t have the fuzziness of dreams either. Hades is entirely too proud. There’s only one left. </p>
<p>Ker. That <strong>bitch</strong>.</p>
<p>She still hasn’t changed after millennia. Still afraid of dirtying her own hands as usual. Lemures are weak creatures. They often have problems with possessing strong-willed humans. What makes them dangerous is the fact when they get in, they stay almost unnoticeably until it's too late and grow stronger with the host. There are few methods to get one out. Most are out of reach in this age and days.</p>
<p>How does he— don’t think about it.</p>
<p>Reluctantly, he removes himself from Saga. Clouds rush over to cover the moon. Half-forgotten (can it even count as forgotten if he has never learnt in the first place?) cosmo manipulation technique staunches the blood and knits the gash shut.</p>
<p>Perhaps this is why the light took him, another divine-touched, even when it has to know he couldn't stay.  </p>
<p>He is born to take the evil that will hold his other half back. His duty is to take it with him to the far away. To the world’s end, to where something like him could exist. </p>
<p>He thinks of the Dioscuri. Pollux shared immortality with the mortal Castor so they could be together. Could he share what he is with Saga? He will be able to take him away for Athena loves humans, not monsters.</p>
<p>He can’t do that. He loves his brother. His brother loves the Sanctuary, loves the idea of Athena, loves the duty of protecting Earth. Saga doesn’t need Kanon’s love. A love that kills is better without.</p>
<p>He refuses to kill Saga because of his own selfishness.</p>
<p>This is better.</p>
<p>Saga will be free and so will he. </p>
<p>No more compromises.</p>
<p>Saga will stay a Gold Saint of Athena. Revered. Adored. Free to die for his belief.</p>
<p>Kanon will be himself. An ugly, horrifying something. A hunk of mortal flesh and dead divinity, exists only due to a mad god’s grace, with malformed wings and lightless black blood, stardust circulating in his veins.</p>
<p>This is better.</p>
<p>He has lived his whole life being defined by his brother. Maybe it is time for him to learn to be his own person.</p>
<p>He pressed bloodstained kisses on fluttering lashes.</p>
<p>
  <em>By your blood and mine, I wish you happiness.</em>
</p>
<p>Time to go.</p>
<p>A golden sun rises at midnight. He catches Aiolos’ startled expression a moment before the Sagittarius arrow punches through his breastbone, where his heart should be. Fragile wings break against the layered stones, carving deep groves to keep him standing. Winds pick up and carry the clouds away, letting the moon shine once more down the Star Hill. The naked revulsion on Aiolos’ face drives air out of his lungs.</p>
<p>Kanon laughs.  Except, it’s not his voice that comes out of his mouth.  Instead, a loud, rumbling hiss makes its way past his lips, sounding like steam escaping from a volcano on the verge of erupting. The hole in the middle of his chest bleeds ink and stardust. It hurts. The singed edges already try to mend. It hurts.</p>
<p>“Where have you—”</p>
<p>There is a terrible buzzing in his ears.</p>
<p>“—gone for days, Kanon!”</p>
<p>He lifts his head at the sound of his name.</p>
<p>“Why do you look like—”</p>
<p>Aiolos is speaking words to him, and he barely understands. He feels like he is floating. <em>It hurts</em>.</p>
<p>“What have you done?!” Aiolos demands. And just like that, it is as if a dam is lifted from his chest and something comes gushing forward. Suddenly, he is crying, for the first time in her life. </p>
<p>“I don’t know,” he admits with lips red of blood and tears dripping down his cheeks.</p>
<p>Then, he hunches over and vomits mortality into his hands.</p>
<p>It’s red too.</p>
<p>His throat aches terribly, and corals have tumbled out into piles with the blood. His fingers, when he reaches into his mouth, entangle with entire vines and sea glass blossoms in full bloom.</p>
<p>He tears them from his throat. It feels like they’re never going to end. Blue after green after blue after red. Thorns scratch the inside of his mouth, his tongue. They scrape over his teeth as he spits them out. Slowly, the last of the bone flowers fall to the ground in a messy, messy shattered death.</p>
<p>He slaps away the arm reaching for him. The brief contact sends him reeling.</p>
<p>“Don’t touch me,” the word comes trembling from fifteen mouths as he winds his malformed arms around himself. More Cosmo approach from afar. </p>
<p>A thought and the Trident returns. Pulling on as much control as he’s still capable of, he slams the end on the floor. Space cracks. He is ejected into the corridors between worlds and starts to move away from the sound of his name being called over and over again. </p>
<p>Everything hurts. He doesn’t want to be here anymore. The only reason why he is here is because he has promised. Kanon the human had promised. Kanon the Sea Dragon has fulfilled. There is nothing else left for him to do here. </p>
<p>He wants to go home. Where is home? He doesn’t know. Not here. In Atlantis. In forgotten pieces on the seabed.</p>
<p>He hears panic creeping into the voices, hears the edge of fear coming in, reverberating in empty space. Desperate fists tear down spider-thread filaments of his technique. Dimension unravels. He drops out on the road leading to Cape Sounion. </p>
<p>Cape Sounion, again. He is starting to hate that place.</p>
<p>He runs now, urged on by the panic in his aching heart, his tentacle legs thrashing, pushing him forward, his malformed wings beating wildly, scales and claws grasping blindly at the dirt. Before, he could get to the point in a blink. No chance with a body he can barely control.</p>
<p>His brother has recovered. It’s too much to ask a clumsy open heart surgery to put him down and out. His chest aches, not from wound but from the thought of that same look on Saga’s face when he sees him… if he sees him. The revulsion, the fear, the hate, same as almost every other face that has looked upon his bare inhumanity and recoiled.

</p>
<p>He doesn’t want to know, for that thought is unbearable.</p>
<p>He scampers, crawls, runs to the cliff side. Stars and moon are spectators to his descent. He sews the spatial rips shut when Saga tries to follow. He is losing. His head start is rapidly depleted. He has never been as good in space manipulation as Saga is before and definitely not now.</p>
<p>One last burst of frenzied cosmo, stronger than anything he has felt before, the night air is vaporised around him. He has lost but it doesn’t matter. He leaps. The sea is a cradle rising up to meet him half-way.</p>
<p>A familiar palm grips his wrist and follows him over the edge. It doesn’t hurt.</p>
<p>He is suddenly transfixed by the lines of shadows and light writ on Saga, how they bring out the paleness of his skin, the shortness of his breaths. The tear over his heart has opened. He is still missing the chest piece. His expression is torn, spidered with cracks. However, the most important thing is, there is no disgust. </p>
<p>He sees himself in sunken eyes. The little brother Kanon is no more, in his place, a creature of lurid nightmares. A weight is suddenly lifted off him.</p>
<p>Displaced air carried his tears upward. He smiles through the crumbling remnant of old Kanon.</p>
<p>“You were right.”</p>
<p>Salt water whips around them, doing its best to rip them apart, forcing itself into the grip. The grip holds.</p>
<p><em>I’m sorry. I love you</em>, he thinks. “Farewell,” he says.</p>
<p>The maws of the ocean snap shut, cutting off his arm at the elbow and pulling him under.</p>
<p>Saga’s propelled up and onto the shore, far more gently than the violent waves suggest.

</p><hr/>
<p>The curse of the Gemini, whisper the subjects of Sanctuary, has struck again. For while the older brother seems perfect in any way, he does have a weakness, as all mortals are wont to do. And this weakness takes the form of the younger brother. Peculiar thing, some hum, with eyes like deep water and terrible hunger. Mirror images but so, so different.</p>
<p>Misfortune strikes at the witching hour.</p>
<p>One day, the young brother went missing. Days later, he came back as a ghastly creature. A monstrous amalgam of angry, broken and twisted oceanic biology. He looked like a mad god’s fantasy. Tentacles, fins, gills, luminescent lures, scales, transparent portions, stingers sew together with the human body nestling in the middle. He was horrific, monstrous yet hypnotic.</p>
<p>It was understandable if you didn’t believe it. There were marks, you see. Strange marks marred the ground from Cape Sounion to the Star Hill. Some looked like claws. Some looked like blades. Some looked like… something others. Sea corrals bloomed on land. Salt bubbled up from stone.</p>
<p>Dozens of people saw him that night. Foot soldiers would be more than happy to regale anyone listening but only out of earshot of the truly important. Half of the current Gold Saints were there that night but they wouldn’t say anything because of the older brother. </p>
<p>Said older brother, Gemini Saga was spotted blank-faced, carrying a scaled arm that dripped ink and stardust back to the Gemini Temple later.</p>
<p>No one knew what had truly gone down that night, but the aftereffect was significant. The Grand Master was said not to have long left. Sagittarius Aiolos was officially chosen to be the next Grand Master. There was only one Gemini Saint left.</p>
<p>They talk, guess, hypothesize. Perhaps a malevolent god had taken him over. In some retells, he willingly gave himself up for power. Another, he was never a human in the first place and this was what happened when he shed the human form.</p>
<p>The truth has disappeared under the brutal tides along with Gemini Kanon.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>~</p>
</div>He drifts with the currents feeling very much like a ghost. Alas, he arrives at what is left of Atlantis. He steps through the ruined gate and into a dead city.<p>The ground beneath his feet is of polished stone, a courtyard with no grass or trees. He wanders through flooded streets. Statues loom on pedestals, surrounded by pools where water once might have run—but they are all underwater now, or so it seems. The silence so thick it lies like sediments. For a moment, Kanon cannot move.</p>
<p>He, Sea Dragon, died here, he remembers.</p>
<p>The city is as it was before, just devoid of the warmth that made it worthy of that term. There is nothing but the fallen and the forgotten.</p>
<p>He is the only being of blood and flesh to walk down these corridors in a long time. The rubbles around him are home to many in the past, yet now it is an unfamiliar maze to all. No light falls on the words that spoke to nobody, unaware that their audience had vanished. It is as if a god had stopped time, removed all the distractions so he could see it for real, see how it really is, what it really is. </p>
<p>He knows that is factually wrong. The god of this city, Poseidon, has used himself to keep what he loves in this hostile world and in turn, dooming them to the non-existent mercy of life. How typical of the gods.</p>
<p>He is home. </p>
<p>This doesn’t feel like home. </p>
<p>Home is where the heart is and his heart is traitorous and unfaithful.</p>
<p>He is home.</p>
<p>He crawls to the foot of the dial where the Sea Dragon Scale - unmoving, eternal, slain but not gone - lay, and there falls in a heap on cold stone ground. His thoughts swim erratically in his head. </p>
<p>What does he do now? Where will he go? What will become of him? </p>
<p>Kanon curls into himself, his new (old) limbs enveloping the human-shaped center.</p>
<p>He is home.</p>
<p>Saying something often enough will make it become the truth.</p>
<p>He is home.</p>
<p>At the bottom of the sea, Atlantis dreams.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Apparently, I only have one way to express my affection.</p>
<p>Thanks the people who give me this idea!</p>
<p>Please enjoy.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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